E-GOVERNMENT IMPACT ON THE DOING BUSINESS RANKINGS AND NEW BUSINESS OWNERSHIP RATE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE DYNAMICS BASED ON COUNTRIES’S INCOME FROM 2008 TO 2014

The level of e-government readiness or development is widely unequal between countries. One of the main variables that explain this difference is the income level of the country. This paper aims to measure the impact of change of e-government index (and its composing sub-indexes) in the ease of doing business and the rate creation of new business in different groups of countries, categorized into high, middle and low income countries. The study used a panel data design, with four points (years 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014), in three change periods (2008/2010, 2010/2012 and 2012/2014), collecting data from various databases: Doing Business Report by World Bank, United Nations E-Government Survey, Corruption Perception Index by Transparence International and World Bank Entrepreneurship Survey. The data was joined and analyzed with non-parametric correlation and stepwise regression. The models had good predictive power for upper and middle income countries, but not for low income, indicating that different models should be applied to understand e-government relationship with outcome variables, according to the income level and e-government development level. Suggestions for future research are also presented.